Look at the detailed words in verse 10, the tasks of the ministry. The first few outcomes are negative, only the last two are positive. ‘To root out’, that suggests the rooting out of sin because the people don't know that they are sinners and they fool themselves that they are vastly more righteous than they are, that they are nice people and they do good things. It is only through the word of God that they are going to learn that that is not how God sees them. So we have to bring to the surface what's beneath the surface, to show people, down in the dark recesses of their hearts, what they are really like. Preaching has to find a way of doing that, so that the Holy Spirit can use that and apply it to hearts, without people running out of the building in disgust. That is not an easy task, but that is what we must do.
‘To pull down’, which suggests the pride of man. I remember when I was a youngster and I was converted, the prevailing way of preaching in evangelical churches had gone a bit soft – I am going back to the 1950s. The preachers liked to be nice to people (well preachers must always be nice to people), but the preachers liked to only say nice things to people. ‘All those people who need the Lord, well they are all nice people. We want to add the Lord to their lives. We don't offend them or say anything that to them that would shock them like, ‘You are a sinner and you need a Saviour and you are utterly lost, and you are proud, and you are corrupt.’ No, no. Just be nice to people and show them that they just need something more to make them happy and content and give them Christ. This was the prevailing way of preaching; it was very soft. I remember the first time I ever heard Martyn Lloyd Jones, Dr Lloyd Jones, at the Westminster Chapel, which would have been think in 1956 or ‘57. He was in an evening service dismantling the world, and he wasn't doing it in an unpleasant way or in an abusive, condemning way particularly, but he was demonstrating very powerfully the foolishness of the world and the shallowness of the world, the corruption of the worldly life, and its unsatisfying nature. He was really showing the foolishness of being a worldling. And you could see that there were people there who were new to church who were shocked and listening and waking up. ‘This is true! My life is shallow. I am a lost person.’ Now that was not the general way of preachers in those days. ‘I have set you to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down.’ The preacher has to do that. People have to feel their need. It has got to be done in the right spirit, but they have got a feel the shallowness and the foolishness and the emptiness the futility of life without the Lord.
And then on the end, ‘to build and to plant.’ God uses these toiling words. He is not giving him an easy task. Building is always arduous, planting is always arduous, and so here is the commission of the person who would be a spokesman for God in witness, in pulpit in any realm.
The Lord Jesus Christ said exactly the same to the apostles and to the young church: that, in a mysterious sense, the eternal destiny of people is going to be determined by the church who hold the keys of the kingdom; that if we say a person is clean, he will be clean. And if we say he is condemned and polluted he will be polluted. Is that so? Well, not literally, of course, but it means that because we are declaring the word of God, it is the result of their response to our word that they are either blessed or judged, so it looks as though it is from us. What an incentive for proclaiming Christ and the gospel: to be so blessed that it looks as though we are commanding and determining the destiny of people.
When you have the word of God, you have authority. It is not your authority; it is God's authority. And we go with his authority to warn the office, the workplace, the fellow students wherever we are, colleagues, to take opportunities, to pray for opportunities; always gently to be an influence, to stand for the word of God and the things of God. We are to preach the gospel, publicly, privately, at every opportunity. What are we doing? We are rooting out sin. By our preaching and our proclamation and our teaching of children, God will draw people out of a life of sin. It is as though we are rooting it out. What a calling! God has called me before the foundation of the world to live in this world, and in this life to work in my office, or my hospital, or my college, or wherever I work or labour; he has called me and placed me in that place to have authority. ‘Authority? But I am the lowest person in the department. Everybody bosses me around.’ Spiritually, before the world began, you were called and trusted to have authority, and the authority comes out in this sense: that as you speak, God buries the word in hearts. Sometimes you will see a turn. Sometimes you will have the privilege of advising that person, leading them to church. Sometimes it will be after they have gone somewhere else, God will speak to that life through some tragedy or some illness or some disappointment or difficulty, and your words will be used in their being turned into seekers and finders of the Lord. And that is your authority. You don't necessarily see all the effects, but you will see many of them as life goes on.
I don't think there has ever been so much error as there is in the churches of Christ at the present time. Somebody said, a few years ago, there has never been so much knowledge and so much disobedience as there is now in the church. What a strange thing, when it comes to the point that there are hundreds and hundreds of churches that say, ‘We are Reformed’; at the same time, there has never been churches on this scale that are so incredibly worldly, and really offensive to God. It's a massive contradiction. What a victory by the enemy! All of us called to take every opportunity to try to warn, and to remonstrate, and to appeal, and to stand so that people are drawn out. And it is happening. Here and there all over the country, over the last twenty, thirty years, people have been saying, ‘I was knee deep in the Charismatic movement; I was knee deep in the contemporary worship movement, and the Lord brought me out through someone's faithful witness, and statement, or an item of literature. You say that movement is so powerful, but the Lord has determined before we were born to give his true people authority to bring people out, and that is what we must all seek to do, and, of course, to remain out ourselves.